Pigtails
by VickyVicarious
Summary: "He finds himself stuck in second grade all of a sudden, staring blankly at her in the front of the class and feeling a very strong urge to yank on her left pigtail." Shin/Yankumi.


Written all of a sudden after coming across some gorgeous Gokusen fic. It's been over a year since I read the manga and I've never seen the drama or anime, but there's no real plot in here to screw up anyway.

Shin says 'Yamaguchi' because I remember him doing that in the manga, being the only student not to call her 'Yankumi', which was probably in some vain attempt to get her to see him differently, or maybe just because he didn't like the nickname, who knows.

* * *

><p>Yamaguchi is the… most motivated, at least, if not the <em>best<em> teacher at Shirokin. She has all sorts of not-so-clever tricks to convince the boys in her class to listen to her and to make learning math actually sort of tolerable, if not anywhere near as fun as she seems to find it. She approaches them at their level and doesn't back off, and in the end, far more than all of the _better_ teachers at Shirokin and elsewhere, Yamaguchi actually manages to get them to pass their tests. They may all even graduate. For the first time in years, her students actually understand what a teacher is saying, sometimes.

All but one.

Sawada Shin really should not be here. He is the pride of the school, oh yes, but it's not doing _him_ the slightest bit of good. Either he already knows what the teachers are discussing, or he picks it up within the first three sentences and sits around bored for the rest of the time. He is ridiculously advanced and all the enthusiasm in the world is unnecessary because he would've passed no matter what.

Except that of late, the teacher that is miraculously bringing all his classmates up to speed has somehow managed to do the exact opposite for him. She has not only taught Shin nothing, but Yamaguchi has actually gone even _further_ than that; somehow she's managed to entirely erase all the knowledge he's already amassed, years back until he finds himself stuck in second grade all of a sudden, staring blankly at her in the front of the class and feeling a very strong urge to yank on her left pigtail.

"And here," she says, "you just have to divide this, and A will equal 32! See, it's simple!"

Mumbles, vaguely shifting shoulders, and one loud conversation about a pinup calendar, in which direction Yamaguchi throws a textbook without looking and the offenders quickly shut up.

"It's so simple even _you_ could do it, Uchi!" Yamaguchi gushes, darting forward to clamp down on his wrist and drag him up to the blackboard, ignoring his protest; "Hey, Yankumi, you calling me stupid?"

Assorted snickering in his direction.

Shin is wondering if her hair would be soft, clean, smooth – or stiff and in need of a shower, which is likely considering the way she missed her bus today, ran all the way to Shirokin, and was still fifteen minutes late, for which her class teased her mercilessly.

Her hair is so, so long – he'd be able to get a good yank, sharp enough to whip her head around. He'd be able to yank her right to him. He'd be able to twist his fingers in her disgusting, sweaty hair, and pull until her head spun close and her eyes met his and he would want to ask if she liked him and she'd say of course she did, he was her precious student, and then she'd punch him in the gut for pulling her pigtail.

Shin's heart is thumping far harder than the drama of watching Uchi try to solve a simple geometry problem is worth, his mouth dry, his legs itching to walk up to the front of the classroom. Shin's brain is completely out of orbit, wondering if she might meet his eyes from that close and if her breath would smell as terrible as her sweaty hair probably does, and he completely fails to notice Uchi, Kuma, Minami, and finally Noda all failing miserably at solving the simple problem.

Giving up, Yamaguchi says, "Fine! Sawada, come up and demonstrate it again. But this is the last time you guys! I'm definitely testing you on this stuff next week, so pay attention already!"

Shin is thinking of making a paper airplane and throwing it at Yamaguchi's head. He'd write, _do you want to go out with me? circle one: yes/no_ –

"Sawada! You're up!"

– and she would crumple it up and write a note back about the appropriateness of age gaps and teacher/student boundaries and that no, she would not pass that note on to Fujiyama-sensei for him! Shame on him for even thinking it! – and she would fold her note up into an airplane and send it shooting back at him to miss completely and go out the window instead, and Shin would want to laugh but he'd keep quiet and just smirk at her glowering expression as if he were totally innocent.

"SAWADA. The board!"

She slams her hand down on her desk, teeth bared threateningly, and Shin blinks his way back to vague awareness, enough to yawn and amble painfully slowly up to the board to solve the ridiculously simple equation in all of two seconds – even stuck in second grade, this is easy for him.

Shin brushes the chalk off his fingers, and stays standing up there for a moment because Yamaguchi is loudly praising him, his friends totally ignoring her until she adds, "And I guess Sawada will be the _only one _to get any free ice-cream after passing the test next Friday. Maybe I'll even buy him an extra serving, since I'll have so much spare change when you're all not there!"

She slams her hand onto his head and ruffles his hair with all the force of a pile driver, and Shin slumps into himself largely against his will until he's shorter than she is, when normally it's several inches the opposite. Her fingers are calloused and scratch his scalp and he wants to slump into _her_ instead, and close his eyes, and call her Kumiko but instead he just mumbles that he doesn't like ice-cream.

No one hears. They are all too busy expressing their extreme irritation at such under-handed tactics and declaring their desire for various ice-cream flavors and of course falling for Yamaguchi's trick very easily. The bell rings conveniently then, they rush out as usual in ten seconds flat, and Yamaguchi chuckles as she watches them go.

She is, unlike most people who ruffle hair, not resting her hand on Shin's head but rather _gripping_ it. She could probably lift him up into the air with just this grip. He is getting a headache.

"Ow," he says, and she blinks down at him like she's forgotten he is there, which she probably has.

"Oh, Sawada," Yamaguchi says, letting go with one last rough ruffle, "good job. You can have extra ice-cream, okay?"

"Even if none of them pass after all? It's not much fun if you get just me ice-cream, right?" He says this despite knowing that at least seven of them are going to pass now, and Yamaguchi's going to give them ice-cream and let the rest retake the test and then buy them ice-cream too and everyone will feel very proud of themselves.

Yamaguchi grins at him so widely that Shin's cheeks hurt in commiseration. "As if that'd happen! But even so. A promise is a promise. Besides, it'll be fun to spend some time with my cute little student." She reaches her hand out as if to ruffle his hair again. Shin quickly steps back.

"Stop that."

"Aww, why?"

"Because, it's annoying, and I'm not a little kid."

She laughs at that, like it's ridiculous, which is annoying because it isn't ridiculous at all, it's _true_ and Shin is right this very instant suppressing the urge to step too close to her and press his mouth to her neck and express the desire to go out for ice-cream except not as a cute little student, and not ice-cream because he doesn't like ice-cream, but maybe dinner and also at the same time he would be touching his fingers to her cheek and around her waist and he would touch his nose to hers and kiss her and slide his fingers further round her waist and up under her stupid ugly sweatshirt and probably equally stupid and ugly t-shirt under it to touch her bare skin and he would maybe shove her up against the blackboard and just go at it right there in the classroom in between classes, except that Yamaguchi would have already thrown him out the window the moment he touched her and he'd just end up in the hospital instead with her sending him flowers of apology addressed to her cute little student without any mention at all of how much she surely would have liked his lips on her neck because she probably wouldn't have even noticed them at all, or thought he was practicing for Fujiyama if she did.

But she's laughing at the mere notion that Shin is anything but a little kid, so he just lets her turn him into one yet again and reaches out and yanks on her left ponytail.

He pulls hard enough to jerk her head forward a bit, and her hair is indeed greasy and sweaty and he really wants to wrap it around his hand and use it to pull her closer but he won't pursue that thought because he's being a second-grader right now.

"Don't touch my hair," Shin says, letting go, "or I'll touch yours."

Then he turns and leaves the classroom, ignoring the way Yamaguchi stammers a bit and was probably actually possibly blushing to a small degree, though he's not looking back to make sure. Kuma is waiting for him at the end of the hallway, looking a bit sheepish about leaving him behind, and offers a bag of chips, which Shin declines.

Kuma suggests next, "Want to skip history?"

Shin thinks of sitting at a desk and staring blankly at a teacher who is not Yamaguchi, thinks of yawning for real this time and actually being able to think with more than the intelligence of a second-grader or teenage libido, which still is so stupidly focused on that maybe half-glimpse of Yamaguchi blushing and the streaks of oil her disgusting hair left on his fingers.

"Okay," he says, and they go to the roof, where Shin closes his eyes and thinks about how hot and sweaty and stinky and utterly unappealing her skin would be and how ridiculous it would be to hear her call him 'Shin' and smile against his mouth and use that crushing grip to hold him to her.

It would be so gross, touching Yamaguchi.

She probably has cooties or something.

Shin lays on the roof with his eyes closed and laughs at himself and his headache and gets up later, goes home, comes to school the next day and sits blankly in Yamaguchi's class, only vaguely aware of the chaos around him, staring dazedly up at the front of class.

Yamaguchi is talking animatedly, pigtails swinging. Shin thinks that it was kind of nice to pull her left pigtail. But now what about the right one? Is he just going to neglect that one now?

"Shut up everyone and at least pretend you knew I assigned homework so I can hear some original excuses for once!" shouts Yamaguchi, and Shin is probably in love with her.

But it's better not to go there, better to be just second-grade and think that hey, he really kind of wants to pull her right pigtail now.


End file.
